Professor Marcia Gentry Walked the Talk

Abstract

Our colleague, Professor Marcia Gentry, left us too soon. Thankfully, her professional legacy lives through her scholarship. Likewise, her impact on family and friends endures through her timeless gentleness of spirit. This essay reviews Professor Gentry’s decades-long quest for equity and excellence as markers of our field. Toward this end, Marcia proposed that professionals in the highly specialized niche area of gifted education retire the words gifted and giftedness and focus on excellence and talent development. A core value for Marcia was the belief that equitable access to talent development is fundamentally an issue of social justice. In response, I suggest that we consider how to retire these terms from the vantage point of five pivots, ultimately shifting from gifted education to talent discovery and development thereby promoting equity through excellence. The fifth pivot briefly discusses why we must shift from a nearly exclusive educational perspective to one that incorporates psychological components, including developmental and educational psychological principles.